Saturday, October 30, 2010

A Poem -- "Come Sew and Go" -- by The Artist, age 9

The Artist, age 9 years and 10 months, wrote a poem and asked me to share it with you. Since he's been exceptionally delightful lately, I couldn't resist.  And since the Grandparents read the blog, I'm kind of obligated to post these types of things every now and then anyway.

Please enjoy his poem.

Come Sew & Go
by The Artist, age 9

Every day I go to sew.
When I'm done I go.
My free time
Is my play time.

When I'm nice there's rice.
When I'm mean it's Halloween.
When I'm sad today
It's a bad day.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Happy Teacher's Day

I have to say, every day there's some new thing that makes me love Brazil. Today, it's Teacher's Day.

A good friend of mine clued me in to this fact; the school her children attend is celebrating in a big way. Gifts for the teachers, cards, parties, all that sort of thing. Plus the teachers are showing off the students' work for the parents, I guess proving they (the teachers) are worthy of this day of thanks and praise.

Sounds cool to me.

Being the good Brazilian that I am (at heart), I'm having the boys celebrate with their Professora. I'm sure she'll be thrilled. A few "I love my teacher" cards, maybe some chocolate, supervising recess from the comfort of the hammock in the backyard.....sounds like a brilliant plan to me.

In keeping with the "show off the kids' work" theme, here are some pictures of the boys.

Math: The Writer works in the book; The Artist works on the computer
Both boys use Teaching Textbooks for math.



Reading: 
The Writer was finishing up The Hobbit, 
The Artist had just finished his book and was doing a puzzle as a reward for being done for the day

 


Just Being Cute:
The Adventurer never ignores the camera, so it's hard to catch him actually DOING school. 
Here he is, though, in his 1st Day of School outfit from a few months ago. 

As far as a little progress report -- 

The Writer (7th grade) has finished The Hobbit, just finished a biography of Mother Teresa (Teresa of Calcutta) and is now studying Arabs in the Golden Age. He's reading Harry Potter for his fun reading, and will start Shakespeare Stories for school on Monday. Math, Language Arts, Art and Science all continue on (the boys are learning about Human Anatomy in science).

The Artist (4th grade) is reading a biography of Paul Revere for History right now, as he learns about the American Revolution, and is on book 3 of Harry Potter which does count as school reading for him, though he's also reading The Great Brain and just finished the Percy Jackson series.  His other subjects continue as well.

The Adventurer (Kindergarten) is progressing nicely. He's learning to add, and will often ask me things such as "What is 2 and 2 and 1? What is 3 and 2? What is 1 and 1 and 1 and 2? What is 4 and 1?" and so on until he's asked all the variations of reaching a certain number, be it 5, as in this case, or 6 or 7 or 9 or whatever. He is coming up with these questions on his own, and as such is gaining a great understanding of math. Reading or even phonics are taking a back seat for now, but that's okay. He loves to be read to, from anything and everything, so I'm not terribly worried.

All in all, I'd say the Professora has earned a little day of thanks and praise for all her hard work. So sweet of Brazil to recognize such dedication, don't you think?